Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Mijares developing a new pitch

According to
Star Tribune columnist Patrick Reusse, Twins left-handed reliever Jose Mijares
is honing a new pitch for the 2011 season: the two-seam fastball.

Recently in
camp, pitching Coach Rick Anderson was holding court with the local reporters
when Mijares wander past. Anderson turned his attention to the relief arm and inquired
what Mijares thought of his new weapon. According to Reusse:

“Mijares smiled widely and made a gesture
with a hand that indicated the downward movement of an imaginary baseball.”

In general,
the two-seam fastball, the four-seamer’s cousin, is thrown at a lower velocity
but runs down and towards the pitching arm side of the strike zone. This
differs from the four-seamer as that pitch has a tendency to “rise” (not
actually rise, per se, it just maintains its same plane rather than dipping
like the two-seamer). It can give a pitcher the ability to give opponents a
different look – hitting a different part of the zone or showing another type
of movement. Some two-seamers can have aggressive downward movement – like Brandon Webb’s
sinker – or it can be more subtle, closer resembling Kyle
Gibson’s two-seamer.

Why would Mijares need this new pitch,
especially if he’s got two above-average offerings and typically sees hitters
only once?

Mijares, while gifted with a hard four-seam
fastball and a sharp slider, often struggles with getting the ball down in the
zone. This is fairly evident when you consider that his 52% fly ball rate over
the past two seasons is the ninth highest among relievers. While this trait is
well-and-good within the home run resistant confines of Target Field but on the
road he’s flirting with fire. Overall,
research has shown that the two-seamer is much more prone to inciting a
groundball and adding this pitch could assist in a reduction of Mijares’s
aerial shots and the risk of home runs with it.

Similarly,
the two-seamer is often incorporated into a pitcher’s repertoire to provide
them with another weapon to implement against opposite-handed hitters. Without
question, Mijares has been lethal against southpawed swingers. In his career he’s
struck out nearly a quarter of his opponents (24.2%) while holding them to a
.188 batting average against. Righties, on the other hand, have not fared
exceptional well but have seen more success against him. In the previous two
seasons, Mijares has held a .272 average against for the right-handers. Undoubtedly, there will be occasions in which
manager Ron Gardenhire tasks Mijares to retire a powerful lefty only to leave
him out there to work to the subsequent right-hander in a pivotal situation to
save the other arms in the bullpen.

Mijares is not
the only left-handed reliever attempting to add a pitch to battle righties. In
Atlanta, free agent George Sherrill, who has decimated same-sided opponents for
the majority of his career, was clobbered by right-handers last year. In just
95 plate appearances, Sherrill allowed 32 hits (.400 average) and walked 14
while striking out just six. This season, he’s
re-adding a two-seamer to his stash that he ditched back in 2006.

Plenty of other
left-handed pitchers have had made improvements after embraces the two-seamer.

Over the 2008
off-season, Jon
Lester learned a two-seamer from the Braves’ Tim Hudson. According to
Lester’s rotation mate, Josh Beckett, the left-hander discovered that the movement
provided by the two-seam fastball was able to help him induce a grounder when
needed. This past season, Lester’s groundball rates jumped from 47% in ’09 to a
career-high of 53.6% last year. Perhaps it was because of MLB Advanced Media’s updated
algorithm that identified more of his pitches being thrown as two-seamers
rather than the catchall “fastball”, but the pitch f/x system categorized
Lester as throwing more two-seamer/sinkers this past season – a possible
explanation for the jump in grounders.

Rays’ phenom
David Price is another two-seam
fastball infusion success story. After a very good first year in the majors
in 2009, the left-handed Price was still exposed somewhat to right-handed
opponents. Those hitters hit .240 off of him while posting a m’eh 1.84 K/BB ratio. The introduction of
the two-seamer in 2010 saw Price shave his right-handed opponents’ average down
to .222 while improving his K/BB ratio to 2.25.

Obviously,
both Lester and Price are two of the game’s premier left-handers but you can
see the effects that their inclusion of a two-seamer did to their opponents.
But it goes beyond just the results on the one particular pitch. Having the
two-seamer in their arsenal allowed them to set-up other pitches inside or up as
right-handers were forced to monitor the space low in the zone.

The suggestion
here is not that Mijares could become a pitcher of Lester or Price’s caliber by
simply adding a pitch. The real question is how much incrementally better could
he be based on where he is today. If he can harass the pitch appropriately, the
two-seamer would help reduce the total amount of fly balls allowed thereby
shaving down some of the home runs allowed while giving him another weapon to
use against right-handed opponents – making him a more complete relief pitcher
rather than one that needs to be limited to lefties.

Another
residual effect that adding another variation of the fastball is that if he’s
able to control it Mijares might be able to reduce the number of pitches thrown
in each at-bat. Last season Mijares threw 4.3 pitches per plate appearance.
That was significantly higher than the league average of 3.84. By throwing a
two-seamer more often hoping to induce contact but of the less devastating variety,
Mijares might be able to work through hitters quicker and low his overall pitch
count in a given outing. Because of his questionable conditioning, it would
better serve him if he were able to lighten his workload in order to maintain
throughout the long season.

Because Mijares is
already equipped with a good four-seamer in addition to a deadly slider that
has completely baffled same-sided opponents at times, the newfound two-seamer
could help that success spill over into his platoon splits against right-handed
hitters, transitioning into that "complete pitcher". If he can maintain good health – certainly a concern for him given his recent past – he’s clearly on the path to being the dominant late innings lefty which the Twins envisioned for him as he was
developing though the system.

3 comments:

The Braves' Kenshin Kawakami decided to increase his two-seam usage last season after muddling results in 2009. It looks as if he wasn't able to keep the pitch down in the zone enough nor was using it on the corners of the plate and was whacked around even more (higher line drive rate, more HRs) than he was in '09. So, yes, there are drawbacks to the two-seamer if Mijares can't control it.

About OtB

"Parker Hageman is the Michael Cuddyer of Twins bloggers -- not the flashiest guy out there, but a solid everyday player. Hageman produces spot-on analysis ... relying on in-depth stats and lots of charts. He takes a sober, performance-based view of players, letting others fall for a player's heart or his leadership skills in the clubhouse. Hageman is one of the four pillars holding up the Star Tribune's TwinsCentric blog."